KIRKUS REVIEW

This atmospheric ghost story delivers enough tension and shivers to satisfy all young ghost and mystery connoisseurs. Set near a loch in Scotland it has loads of fascinating elements, including an eerie house, a lost soul trapped between worlds, and a sealed closet concealing a dark secret. Within the ancient walls of Ninian House, strange things occur. It was built and rebuilt throughout the ages with stones and logs left over from the likes of Roman walls and crumbling abbeys. The house trips from time dimension to time dimension, one moment in the Middle Ages, the next flitting to the Victorian, but always back to the present. Ewan, our hero, and his artistic parents are eccentric enough to appreciate this about the house, but Ewan is discomfited by the appearance one day of the wan young girl, Elspeth, who pleads for help before vanishing again. Elspeth, we soon learn, died of diphtheria in the ’30s. As she was about to pass away, the house shifted its place in time and trapped her. Ewan helps Elspeth, although it isn’t as easy as it first appears. The key solution turns out to be Elspeth’s cousin, Alex, now a grown man and priest. Disjointed elements rush to align too conveniently as when readers learn that the priest, Alex, is also a kind of ghost guide. But overall, McAllister’s (Hold My Hand and Run, 2000) tightly wound plot speeds along without a wasted word. (Fiction. 9-13)

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